WEBVTT - America Runs on Women, that Status Quo Could Be Devastating 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:07.040 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:10.560 You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:14.600 Tim Stenovik on Bloomberg Radio. Well, last year, women's earnings 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.279 were eighty three point six percent of men's. This is 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:20.919 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:22.520 not going to surprise any of you. It's not news 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:26.160 to any of you. We know equal payday. We've been 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:30.360 talking about this forever. It's not getting any better. What 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.520 is talked about less though, is all of the work 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:37.680 that women do that's on paid childcare, taking kids to 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:41.880 the doctor, cooking for the family, managing the family budget, 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:44.519 taking care of elderly family members, figuring out what the 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:47.760 kids are doing for the summer, doing all the work 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:48.440 for our show. 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:53.200 Here, amen, Tim Stenovic, please go ahead. Tim is actually 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.320 a really good partner and we share. But in a 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:58.720 lot of way, women are the family safety net. They 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:00.240 are holding it together. I have to say there's a 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.600 story my sister loves to say when she was at 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:07.160 home with three kids and she and her my brother 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:08.880 in law, she and her husband, We're talking about like 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:12.040 insurance and she's like, no, you need more insurance for 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.600 me because I am the limo driver, I'm the cook, 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.600 I'm the cleaner, I'm like, you know. She just kind 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:20.919 of went through it, and it was a really funny, 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:23.640 funny conversation, but she was kind of laying out all 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:25.840 the jobs she does, and she says, Yeah, the insurance 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:27.080 you need on me is a lot more than you 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:27.839 need on you, honey. 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:30.920 I can see Jessica Calarko just nodding right now. She's 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:33.880 a sociologist and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:36.880 at Madison. Her new book is called Holding It Together, 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:40.080 How Women Became America's Safety Net. She joins us from 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:42.480 Madison at Wisconsin. I got to tell you, we've been 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.160 talking about this book for a while and it's great 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:47.200 to get to talk to you about it. I just 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:49.360 want to start with some numbers here, because your book 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.000 takes us through a lot of anecdotes of women who 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.120 you spoke to, who you interviewed, and what they're doing. 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:59.280 But we're Bloomberg. We love numbers, we love data. What 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.200 can you tell us about just how much work women 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:04.000 are doing for the American economy? 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:08.920 Sure, so, essentially, women are the default caregivers for the children, 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.160 for the sick, for the elderly, not only for kids, 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:13.880 but filling in those kinds of jobs that you mentioned before, 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:16.880 and essentially they are doing this work. This is actually 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.240 related to the numbers that you mentioned before in terms 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:21.440 of you know, women's equal pay or the lack of 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:23.440 equal pay, in part because the kind of work that 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.200 women are doing behind the scenes is a big factor 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.000 in where that gender gap and pay comes from. That 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.840 the more labor, the more unpaid labor, we heap onto women, 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:35.080 the harder it is for them to advance in their careers, 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:36.960 the harder it is for them to compete with men 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.280 and in ways that other countries don't. And research shows 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.960 that one of the strongest predictors of our economic growth 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.000 in countries is the amount of money that we invest 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.040 in providing the kinds of supports that help to alleviate 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:51.960 some of those gender gaps in both unpaid work and 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:53.920 also the kinds of gender gaps that show up and 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:54.919 paid work as well. 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:57.919 Jessica, if the pandemic hadn't Hatten happened, would you have 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:00.000 written this book? 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:03.160 I think so certainly. This book started as a project. 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:04.880 I was interested in what I thought of at the 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.240 time as the sort of best laid plans of parenting, 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:09.760 how you have ideas about the kind of parent that 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:12.720 you want to be, and life intervenes, and life intervened 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:14.600 in the sense of a pandemic happened in the middle 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:17.640 of my data collection efforts and really pushed me to 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.200 want to understand that the interviews that we were doing, 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:22.320 in the surveys we were doing with families across the 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.960 US at the time, really showed how much of an 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.760 impact the pandemic was having, especially on families with children, 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:31.400 and especially on the moms within those families who were 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:33.960 really trying to hold it together in the midst of 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.360 this crisis, which which led me to want to understand, 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:38.760 how did we get to this point of relying on 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:41.240 women to be the social safety net for us? And then, 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:43.800 in the context of the failure of build back better, 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:45.920 you know, why didn't we learn from the mistakes of 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.680 the pandemic. Why didn't we pursue those kinds of policies 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.360 that might have helped to put us on better footing, 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:55.520 both genderwise and in terms of economic parity with other 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:57.760 types of countries that have used those social safety nets 0:03:57.800 --> 0:03:58.320 for decades. 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.160 Okay, so the simple question with not a very simple answer. 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:03.280 How did we get here? How did we get to 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:06.240 the point where women became America's safety net? 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.400 So we can trace this back to Essentially, in the book, 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:11.360 I traced this back to the nineteen thirties and to 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:15.280 the pushback in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Essentially, 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.560 at the time, the National Association of Manufacturers, a business 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:21.640 lobbying agency, was looking for ways to resist some of 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:24.640 the higher corporate taxes and higher taxes on wealthy people 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:27.400 that were needed to pay for these kinds of strong 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:30.200 social safety net programs. And what they found at the 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:31.960 time I talked about in the book where a group 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.400 of neoliberal economists out of Austria who were developing this 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:38.680 theory that we don't actually need social safety nets as 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.719 a country because if we don't have protection, people will 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:45.160 take steps, make better choices to keep themselves safe from risk. 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:48.520 And this theory has been debunked over time in showing 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:51.400 that that's not actually how people respond to risk. But 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:54.799 they use this to fuel not only changes in policy 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:58.080 in the US, but also massive propaganda campaigns things like 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:01.960 General Electric Theater, which helped to create this perception of 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:04.480 kind of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, this very 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:08.760 American mentality, and also reinforced traditional gender roles, which helped 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.960 to lay the groundwork for the kinds of policy decisions 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:14.360 that we made after World War Two. For example, of 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:17.719 instead of trying to take steps to allow women to 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:20.360 stay in the workforce to continue those rosy, the riveter 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.479 jobs that they'd had, we shuddered the childcare centers that 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:25.479 we put in place during the war, and we pushed 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:29.280 women back home and really embraced the nineteen fifties culture 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.559 around gender and that echoes of that still exist today 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:34.200 and the way that we treat women. It was a 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:35.160 reserve flo I have. 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.279 To jump in because here we are seventy years My 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:39.800 grandmother was a Rosie the riveter, like here we are, 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:44.320 and she was actually a working woman before and after 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:47.400 the war. It was just kind of what they had 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:49.000 to do. It was also a time when you had 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:53.320 multi generations in a household, and you know, older generations 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:55.479 to care of the kids, and you know, but that 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:59.360 was kind of my grandparents' household. Having said that, here 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.679 we are, what seventy years later, and we're still talking 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.000 about the same old problems. Tim we talk about childcare, 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:10.680 the costs, the juggling, like, why haven't right it's. 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:13.440 I mean, I can speak from personal experience. It's just 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.799 a daily struggle figuring out who's picking up what kid, 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:18.120 who's cooking dinner? 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:20.479 And you guys mean and you guys have childcare, we 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:21.200 have childcare. 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:21.559 Yeah. 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:23.280 So I just feel like, why are we still having 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.440 these difficult conversations. Why haven't we figured out a better system? 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:28.840 Why isn't it It's not a new thing, is it 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:32.800 policymakers at the federal level? Is it state level? Is 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:37.560 it just a society so entrenched that we don't value 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:38.480 women as much? 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:40.320 What is it? I mean? 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.360 Essentially, other countries use social safety nets to help people 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:47.120 manage these challenges and manage these risks. They use taxes 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.640 and regulations to not only protect people from falling into poverty, 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.080 but to help people manage the challenges of daily living 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.840 things like childcare, things like healthcare, and also to ensure 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.520 with things like limits on paid work hours, to ensure 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:01.920 that people have the time and the energy to do 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:04.280 this work of taking care of their families, taking care 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:06.880 of their communities, taking care of their homes, even and 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.160 in the US, we instead try to DIY society. We 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:12.440 tell people that they should be able to manage this 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.240 risk on their own, but the reality is that that's 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:17.760 not possible. And that's where women come in, in the 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.800 sense that they're tasked with holding it together, with doing 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.280 the unpaid and underpaid labor that makes it seem like 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:29.200 this DIY illusion is possible even when it's leaving us 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:30.080 on the edge of collapse. 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:33.120 There's a lot we want to get to in the 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:35.760 remaining minutes we have with you. I want to start, though, 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:38.920 by just understanding data collection and how you report it 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.480 out this book. Just give us an idea of how 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:43.840 you were able to gather these stories from so many women. 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.280 Sure, so we started by recruiting two hundred and fifty 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.040 pregnant women from prenatal clinics in Indiana, and this was 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.000 in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, and we were following 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.440 those same women over time with surveys and in depth 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:58.600 interviews every six months from the time that they were 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.920 pregnant through their first two years postpartum. And the pandemic 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:03.400 hit in the middle of this, so we did three 0:08:03.440 --> 0:08:06.600 additional waves of surveys and interviews with the mothers and 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.400 their partners and some of their social network contacts. And then, 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.960 because this was mostly an Indiana based sample, we also 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:15.160 did two national surveys each with over two thousand parents 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:18.560 from across the US to better understand how to kind 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:22.160 of contextualize the findings from our qualitative data. And then 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:24.320 I also dug into a lot of the historical research 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:26.440 and some media case studies for the book as well 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:28.960 to better understand, you know, how do we get here? 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:31.120 And then what are some of the myths that are 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:33.600 helping to the cultural myths that are helping to keep 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:35.360 us from changing. 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:37.400 Let's go there, because that's where I want to go. 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.080 Chapter six, the mars Venus myth. I can't tell you 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:43.080 how many times we're having conversations and it's like, well, 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.720 of course, you know, mars Venus, we're different, We're wired differently, 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.480 so of course women are the caregivers. It's just the 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:53.240 way it is. Go there because I love this sure. 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.400 So essentially, there's this myth that is perpetuated by many 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.240 parts of our culture that suggests that men and women 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:02.520 are just funded mentally different, but women are the book 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.400 two exactly, so I mean it stems in part. I mean, 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:08.439 certainly these ideas are much older than that, but it's 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.120 echoed in this kind of John Gray's kind of classic 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:13.720 men are from Mars, women are from Venus, which almost 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.160 you know, suggests that men and women are from different planets, 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:21.080 not only different species even, And it's echoes of this. 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.640 You can hear this in you know, recent conversations, things 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:26.520 like Harrison Butker's commencement speech around this idea that women 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.360 are just happier at home, that women are that that's 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:33.000 their natural duty or their natural responsibility to be in 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.320 the home. And what research shows is that belief in 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:38.360 these kinds of mythical ideas and that they are mythical, 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:40.880 that that gender is way more complicated than this sort 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:45.600 of simple pink blue binary, and that socialization early exposure, 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:49.559 that parents and adult caregivers treat children very differently on 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.320 the basis of perceived gender from from very early on 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:54.760 in their lives, and that this lays the groundwork. You know, 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:56.960 we expect girls to be mothers from the time that 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:58.880 they're old enough to hold a baby doll in ways 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:00.640 that we simply don't expec for boys. 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:02.600 Well, what's interesting is, you know, and I just want 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:04.640 to stop for a moment. There was an interview you 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.320 did and Tim and I both like reading this. You 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.280 know that Mars and Venus, men and women are just 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:12.800 fundamentally different, both psychologically. 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:14.440 Is you know? 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:17.680 It's an explanation, right, It's also very convenient you have 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:20.199 said in the past. It means though we don't need 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:24.040 big structural solutions. That's kind of the payoff, right, If 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:27.240 we believe that we are fundamentally different, it's not that 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.400 there's something structurally wrong, and that is maybe why we 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:33.920 continue to have this conversation decade after decade. 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:37.000 Exactly what I find in the national surveys that I've 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:39.679 conducted with parents is that the majority of dads, for example, 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:42.199 believe that kids are better off with their mothers at home. 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.120 And what I also find is that the dads who 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:47.280 believe in that myth, who believe that it's better for 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:48.880 kids to have a mother at home than to have 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.280 a mother who's engaged in paid work, is that those 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:54.080 are also disproportionately the dads who reject the need for 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.400 a stronger social safety net and essentially believing this myth, 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.280 believing that women are just happier at home, or that 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:02.760 it's better for kids to have mom at home. Allows 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:04.480 us to feel like, well, maybe we don't need to 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:06.840 invest in that stronger social safety yet, maybe we don't 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:10.520 need paid print to leave or universal affordable childcare because 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:13.320 it just works better for everyone if mom is at home, 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:14.880 as opposed to in the paid work worse. 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:18.720 Where are we right now as we head into the 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.480 election of twenty twenty four because I was actually talking 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:25.080 with I was talking with a guest early on our 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:27.520 crypto show, and she's big in the It was a 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:29.280 crypto show, so she's big into crypto, and she sent 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.200 a tweet out earlier this year, Jessica that talked about 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:37.920 choosing between on the ballot women's bodies and the right 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.920 to have autonomy over your body versus your wallet, because 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:45.200 she doesn't believe that the Biden administration is pro crypto enough. 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.240 And it was interesting to hear that juxtaposition because and 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:50.960 I asked her, is it actually that black and that 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:52.440 white for you? And she said, there are a lot 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:54.600 of people who are single issue voters when it comes 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.120 to crypto, But here in twenty twenty four, I think 0:11:58.120 --> 0:11:59.520 we're at a time when a lot of people never 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:03.080 thought that Wade would actually be overturned. How does the 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.239 conversation in your world shift in an election. 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:08.600 Year like this? Yeah, I mean, I think we have 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:12.079 to think about the way that denying people bodily autonomy, 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:16.720 denying reproductive rights makes it easier to exploit women's labor. 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:19.280 It can push them into motherhood in ways that make 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.319 it difficult for them not only to have choices about 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:25.400 things like finishing college or investing in the kinds of 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:27.920 careers that they need to take time for, but can 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:30.679 also lead them pushed into the kinds of low wage 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:33.840 jobs that offer limited options for their families, that make 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:35.439 it harder for them to get ahead. And so I 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:37.480 think we have to think about the way that these 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.920 kinds of attacks on reproductive freedom are attacks also on 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.839 women's economic opportunities and on their ability to take care 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:47.480 of themselves and their families financially as well. 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.320 You get into this idea, I don't want to end 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:53.920 without thinking about, like, how do we fix this? You 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.200 talk about a union of care. So we've got about 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:58.800 a couple of minutes left. How do we move forward 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:01.240 so that in ten years from now you and I 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:03.319 aren't having this same conversation? 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:06.720 Absolutely, I think we have to You mentioned before the 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.520 break the importance of valuing care work in the sense 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:12.440 that we know that women do twice as much unpaid 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.320 care work in the US as women, and estimates suggests 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.120 that that unpaid care work done by women is valued 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.320 at over six hundred billion dollars a year. And so 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:23.320 I think we can think about that the value that 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:25.720 women are adding to the economy, even if they're not 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.440 themselves being compensated for it, and also recognize how that 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.160 kind of care work benefits all of us, and that 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:35.280 if we all had the kinds of policy protections in place, 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:38.199 that we could share that unpaid care work more equitably 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:41.080 and also ensure that we have the time and energy 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.400 to do it sustainably so that we can you know, 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.000 and I'm guilty myself of having a giant pile of 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:48.360 clean laundry piled in my bedroom because I just don't 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.319 have time to put it all away. But with better protections, 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:53.320 we might have the time. And that's where a union 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:53.960 of care comes in. 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.360 I'm waiting for AI, hoping that's to be quite honest 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:58.760 with you, Yeah, Tim, and I keep talking. You know, 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:00.880 AI is going to be innovative and disruptive when it 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:02.599 can do the dishes and do the laundry, that's what 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:04.520 we're looking for. Run a vacuum. Oh, I've got one 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:04.920 of those. 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:06.760 Around, so then we can actually so then I would 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:08.320 love it. So then I could actually spend more time 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:09.360 with my kids, exactly. 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:12.120 Know. Are you hopeful? Just got about twenty seconds, twenty 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:13.239 five seconds left. 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:15.280 I think I'm hopeful in the sense that if we 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:17.920 can come together and reject the kinds of myths that 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.040 divide us, that we can fight together for the net 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:21.920 that we actually need and deserve. Right. 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:24.040 If anything, we've learned, I feel like since the pandemic, 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.040 since George Floyd, stereotypes myths like these are things that 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:29.960 maybe limit us in thinking differently about the policy that's 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:32.760 really needed to solve some of the problems that are 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:35.000 out there. Jessica really enjoyed it. 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:35.720 Jessica Clarko. 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:38.840 She is a sociologist associate professor at the University of 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:43.600 Wisconsin Madison. Holding It Together, How Women Became America's Safety Net. 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.200 It is a new book and came. 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.240 Out on June fourth, so you can buy it now. 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:50.960 Yeah, really good stuff and really just kind of an 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:53.400 important part of the narrative Jessica, thank you again, really 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:54.080 appreciate it.